2 weeks at Macromedia...

...and I like it!!

I'm still coming up to speed (and am frankly a bit intimidated--it's been a good five years since I last did program management). But thus far I think it's a good gig--nice people, projects that I can really sink my teeth into, and a real chance to make a difference. Flash Lite is the Flash player for cell phones, so has the potential to deploy on a bazillion cell phones. I like the idea of working on something that might someday ship a billion units. Just think of it!

And on top of everything else, I have a snazzy new cell phone, courtesy of Macromedia. (Even nicer than the cell phone Openwave bought me. :-) ) This is a really nice phone--64MB memory, calendar, 1.3 megapixel camera (with a "real" flash!)--just shy of a PDA phone.

More to the point, of course, it also has Flash Lite on it. I've decided Flash Lite is way cool. I didn't think so initially, but after I figured out how to load GAMES into it... :-)

(Hey, that's user testing. Critical to project success.)

Anyway, I'm settling in nicely.

I have spun up 167 yards of gray-white yarn for my laceweight shawl, and am starting to swatch out designs. I had planned to use "Frost Flowers" as the centerpiece of the design, but have realized that it doesn't look good at lacey gauges--it really wants a smaller needle and tighter knitting than I want to give. So it's back to the drawing board. Too bad, after spending an entire train ride charting and knitting up samples.

(Yep, that's right. I'm taking the train to and from work now. I rather like it--a nice 45-minute ride during which I can knit, read, etc. to my heart's content, rather than being stuck in traffic.)

I know, I know, I'm not saying much, but I'm still exhausted from trying to come up to speed. Maybe more in a few more weeks...

California Wool & Fiber Festival

Just got back from the California Wool & Fiber Festival! which is at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds. Had a great time there--it's a relatively small festival, it all fits into a single fair building, but what's there is extremely high-quality and very interesting. I spent a good three or four hours shuttling around, picking up and fondling things, etc.

And I came home with a fleece! I was poking through the various wool fleeces, debating with myself whether I'd actually use them, and then I came across the kid mohair section. I've wanted a nice silver/gray/black kid fleece for awhile, and there one was! Beautiful variegated steel gray, very very soft, and a rosette on top--reserve grand champion! I snapped it up for $42, or about $14/lb. For a high quality colored kid mohair, that's a pretty good price.

Then, of course, I took it home and scoured it. I'm breathless. It's cleaned up from a beautiful fleece into a simply gorgeous one--all the brown tones are gone (a heckuvalot of mud came out in the washing) and it's a shiny variegated steel gray. No brown overtones, as is common in gray fleeces. I'm very, very happy--can't wait to wash up the rest of it! But that will have to wait until tomorrow as the oven is already full of drying wool. (I have a gas oven with pilot light, which is the perfect way to dry wool.)

Rob and I have discussed pinon nut hunting and may try for it two weeks from now. Neither of us is sure they'll still be in season, but it's worth a try.

And, after playing for awhile, I have FINALLY found the right fiber blend for my shawl. It's a two-ply with two different plies:

Medium gray, lustrous ply:

4 g black satin angora
3 g white bombyx silk
2 g gray ultrafine merino (15 micron)

White-gray, fuzzy ply:

4.5 g black English angora (which is actually a very pale gray)
2 g white bombyx silk
1 g white ultrafine merino

It spins up to a misty gray, lustrous, fuzzy ragg yarn (one medium gray ply and one oystershell gray ply gives a bit of a barberpole effect). There's a double halo to it, one of coarser guard hairs from the black satin angora, and one of the softer English angora. It knits up into a soft gray lace that appears to have lots of highlights--an optical illusion from the light/dark "barberpole" in the yarn. I like it a lot, enough to make a shawl from it.

I have a vision of this shawl as a square shawl, titled "Mist". (I'd make it a Faroese shawl except that I know I couldn't possibly handle that much purling. I really prefer to knit in the round.) I'll probably make it another sampler-style shawl, I just have to pick the right set of patterns. Or maybe I'll do a traditional Shetland shawl...though those usually look pretty boring to me.

I'm also finding wheel spinning "feels" very quick compared to spindle spinning. One of these days I'll try timing myself on both and see if the wheel really *is* faster. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if it were. But for the moment, I'm just enjoying the wheel.

Mendocino, California Wool & Fiber Festival

The trip to Mendocino was lovely but long--six hours of driving through some of the most fantastic landscape imaginable. I keep forgetting I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world! I stopped by several fiber places on the way, and fell victim to fiber tourism--bought two skeins of a beautiful pale pale green/pink (reminded me of the inside of a shell), and a skein of Mountain Colors 50-50 mohair/wool yarn. Mendocino Yarns has one of the best collections of yarns I've seen--packed with yarns of all varieties. I wish I'd had more time there, but I was running late for lunch with a friend, so had to scan and run. Too bad!!

On Sunday, I ran up to a friend's place and got to drive their tractor!! It was much like riding an elephant (which I did in Thailand)--the same feeling of slow, lurching, yet inexorable progress on the back of a giant beast. The main difference is that elephants have soft, bristly hair on the tops of their heads that feels much like sticking your feet in a warm lawn.

Anyway, I've decided that tractors are WAY cool and that I must buy a farm just so I can have one. Added bonus: there are way more attachments for tractors than you can shake a stick at. I think of it as a giant Kitchenaid mixer that trundles along. (Kitchenaid elephants? What will they think of next?)

It's now looking like my southern California trip isn't going to work out after all, so I will probably be going to the California Wool & Fiber festival in Booneville instead. I have no idea what to expect--from the looks of it, it's a pretty small festival, but Jean Near will be there with her fantastic fleeces, so I may wind up buying one. Or some skirtings from her fleeces--she charges $20/lb for her top fleeces, which are worth every penny but out of my price range, but even her skirtings are better than most people's regular wool. And they're only $4/lb, if she's selling them at all. Probably not, at a show, but worth checking out anyway.

Work is closing down into the last few days, i.e. I have nothing to do, so it's a very pleasant little vacation. I've been spending most of it spinning--I've decided that I don't like wheels as much as spindles, but they are definitely a LOT faster. I've also tried spinning some heavier-weight yarn (lace to sock-weight). Ironically, I can spin a threadweight yarn perfectly, despite being unfamiliar with the wheel, but am extremely clumsy with thicker yarns--thick and thin slubs despite fierce concentration. It just goes to show, I suppose.

(It's not too surprising considering I've done nothing but spin threadweight yarns for the last three years, but still amusing considering how difficult threadweight is supposed to be, compared to thicker yarns. I still can't bring myself to spin any thicker than sock-weight.)

Anyway, thus far I've spun a lovely skein of dyed merino top (which will one day become socks), and have sampled some for a gray silk-black satin angora shawl. If I can ever get the mixes right, it should drape gently like a gray mist around the shoulders. If I can figure it out!

avoiding boredom buying, Mendocino trip

I spent most of today struggling with the urge to go out and buy more yarn.

I'm sure you've all had that impulse--I'm bored with the current project, let's go out and get more yarn! Because shopping is fun, shopping has all the joy of novelty--I could make this! I could make that! And, of course, the yarn is fabulous.

The only problem with this is that I have enough yarn. I have three pounds of multicolor skeins scattered across the living-room carpet. I have a pound of black superwash yarn, I have skeins of cochineal-dyed and sandalwood-dyed and marigold yarns sitting in the basket. I have two kinds of white sock yarn waiting to be dyed (both luscious silk/wool and cashmere/silk/wool combinations), not quite a pound of white superwash yarn, and eight or nine random balls of all varieties. And, God help us all, I have two pounds of gray wool yarn wending its slow way to me, straight from the fiber mill.

None of which reduces the urge to go out and buy more.

I realize that my yarn stash is very small as most things go--it all fits into a single big plastic box under my bed. But anything more than what I'm using at the moment is a waste of space, money, and yarn. I can only use so much yarn, I can only use it so fast, and right now, my single box of yarn is more than enough to keep me busy. The only reason I want to go buy more yarns is because I'm bored, and I want to try on the novelty of a new project, however briefly.

Nonetheless, there are cheaper ways of managing this than buying $100+ of useless yarn.

I think boredom is essentially a speed mismatch between you and your environment. If things are moving too fast for you to absorb, it's overwhelming (exciting, etc.). If things are moving slower than you are, that's boredom. The answer isn't necessarily to speed up the environment (which is what buying new yarn is all about); sometimes the answer is to slow oneself down. So I spent some time meditating, and then working on a lace project that requires slow patience. That worked pretty well.

(I remember traveling in the Third World: one has more patience there, because time flows differently. We're overstimulated here--every moment must have an exclamation point, every instant needs to be filled. I wish sometimes that I could cut off that Western restlessness and go back to those sunny days in Laos, waiting for the bus that would come eventually, in its own sweet time.)

So I have been slowing down a bit, but also am convinced that I'm suffering from cabin fever. I've been stuck at home for the last week, monitoring my work email but with very little else to do besides knit, spin, and crawl slowly up the walls.

So I'm taking a road trip up to Mendocino, starting tomorrow morning. I plan to drive up through Mendocino to Ukiah, where some friends of mine live, and spend the afternoon blackberrying with them before heading leisurely back to Mendocino and the coast. Or maybe I'll spend the second day in Napa instead. Or both. I like the idea of going up the foggy coast (especially since I remember a little cottage with a fiber artist--rug weaver--that was fantastic to visit; she had different shades of naturally-dyed, handspun yarn festooned across the place), but I also like the idea of going to Napa. I can't afford the spas, but lunch at the Culinary Institute of America is not to be sneezed at, and there's always the possibility (oh please!!) of getting into the French Laundry off their waiting list.

(I can't afford to eat there, either; but for The French Laundry, I'll make room in my budget. If you've never eaten there, save up your pennies and make the reservations--you'll never regret it. Thomas Keller talks to God. He's that good. And I am not given to swooning.)

So, off to Mendocino in the morning.

Wild huckleberries and pinon nuts

Went off yesterday picking wild huckleberries with my ex--these are the native variety, tiny tiny tiny (about the size of a large peppercorn), but with excellent flavor. It took a long time to pick enough for a batch of muffins, but we persevered and eventually wound up with almost a pint of berries.

By then we were chilled through from the fog up on the ridge, so we went on down to Half Moon Bay for chai and took a leisurely drive back up the ridge to his place. He just got another Jaguar convertible (which cost him upwards of $10K to restore), but we took one of his more mundane cars, given that it was cold and chilly.

But it reminded me that it is nearly pinon season! The California pinon pine produces big, juicy, wonderful pinon nuts that are nothing like the shriveled-up, dry pine nuts you buy in stores. (Those pine nuts come from China, by the way.) California pinon nuts are sweet and soft, and big--a little bigger than a peanut. Each one comes in a dark brown, brittle shell that's fun to crack open. They are one of my favorite foods.

But, of course, they aren't sold. Which brings me to the upcoming road trip. Rob and I have agreed that we need to run down and raid some pinon pines...we may be going down tomorrow to check them out. Unfortunately they're mostly down in LA area...so it would be a longish road trip--but well worth it.

Picking pinon nuts is a bit of a trick. The pinon pines aren't prickly, but they are covered in sticky sap--it's almost impossible to get into them without getting sap all over yourself. Last time I went up one, I had my hair wrapped up in a shower cap, wore long sleeves and gloves, long pants and shoes, and still managed to get sap all over myself. The cones have sap on them too. So...it should be an interesting, and messy, trip.

Still worth it for the pine nuts.

I have been spinning more and knitting more and am starting to get bored with both. I need a new project/craft to explore. Any thoughts? There's only so much fiber arts one can do in a day.

Spinning away

A bunch of things are happening at once:

• Fair Isle is FINALLY starting to feel natural. I used to be able to do only one or two rows before getting frustrated/antsy, now I can do a couple rows at a time. I'm still much slower knitting English-style (yarn in right hand), but it's improving.
• I found a book on Celtic knotwork and have revived the Celtic-knotwork-egg projects. Thus far I've set up the grid on a new egg, and am playing idly with knot designs, looking for an appealing border and an appealing center design. It's fun to be messing with it again.
• I've started spinning again! I've set up the wheel and am happily making yarn. It's pretty lumpy-bumpy yarn--I haven't spun on a wheel in well over four years, so it's just like learning to spin all over again. But I've bought eight ounces of merino roving (one a variegated dark purple, another a variegated purple-blue) and I figure by the time I finish spinning that into a sock-weight yarn, things should be a good bit better. My fingers have already improved a lot just from spinning the first ounce.
• I bought an accelerator head for the Suzie so I can get really fine yarns, like the ones in my spiral shawl. I haven't tried it out--I figure the time for that is after I get the hang of spinning thicker yarns.

Other than that things are relatively quiet around here--I'm spending much of my time spinning and knitting, and playing with Celtic knotwork when not doing one of those two.

Natural dye results

So far I've dyed the marigold, the cochineal, and the combo of marigold and cochineal. The marigold came out a lovely gold, and the cochineal produced--startlingly--a gorgeous burgundy, almost exactly the shade of a cut beet. (I mordanted with alum rather than tin, which results in a purple-y dye rather than the traditional cochineal red.) The mix came out a rather saddened orange, one of those in-between shades that isn't much of anything. I've tossed it back into the marigold dyepot to see if it improves.

Meanwhile, I'm putting together a dyepot with red sandalwood--be interesting to see what shade I get with alum. I experimented with red sandalwood and silk awhile back--I wound up with shades of orange and bright red, depending on the mordant.

Thus far I like the colors from the natural dyes, but I'm not too terribly impressed by the shades--these are all things I could reproduce with synthetics, much more easily and without all the boiling. (I admit that it's kinda fun to mess with flowers and bug bits and stuff, though!)

I'm thinking of doing some more natural dye experiments, but for that I would really want a dedicated dyepot--some of the mordants (stannous chloride and chrome in particular) are toxic enough that I don't want them around food, and I'm not sure about a lot of the dyestuffs. Natural != good for you, unfortunately.

Time to go see what the sandalwood has stirred up--last I looked it was a rather ugly shade of reddish brown (think red mud), but there's no knowing what it will look like once it rinses out.

* * * * *

Got the last two skeins out of the dyepot. The marigold-cochineal-marigold skein is very pretty--carrot orange, with strong gold overtones. The red sandalwood is almost exactly the same shade, except with cool brown overtones instead of gold--not nearly as pretty, IMO. It's too bad I don't have tin mordant (to get better reds), except then I'd need a dedicated dyepot.

The interesting part about these dyes is that they are richer and more complex than most of the premixed dye colors you can get in stores. They are not richer and more complex (IMO) than some of the dye blends I've done while making my dye samples. I think one of the things that makes natural dyes as pretty as they are is simply that they have multiple coloring agents, so instead of a single flat color you get lots of over and undertones. The same thing can be done with synthetic dyes providing you're willing to do some color mixing, and have some idea what you're doing. It just takes a lot more experience/expertise than picking out off-the-shelf colors.

I'm not sure I'd say natural dyes are better or worse than synthetics. It's different. Natural dyes are an intuitive process with a lot of "hand" satisfaction--lots of fiddly bits you can get your fingers into. Synthetic dyes are easier to use, but don't have the magic of seeing color come out of bits of root and bark and bug stuff.

All that said, I think I'm probably going to put the natural dye obsession on hold for the moment, in favor of going back to work on Celtic knotwork stuff.

Got the Suzie!, natural dyes

I picked up the Majacraft Suzie yesterday! and have been practicing spinning on a wheel. It's like learning how to spin all over again--learning how to balance the brake band against the wheel speed against the diameter of the yarn. I've been working at it a little while, will work on it more this week. I want to get to the point where I can control the wheel well enough to make the yarn I want.

I have also been making some modifications to the Suzie, mostly along the lines of bending the delta orifice to be more centered along the shaft. It was pretty badly off-center when I got it, and it took some work with a vise and pliers to get it mostly back on center. But the wheel now spins MUCH more smoothly.

I am also playing with natural dyes! I bought some marigolds on impulse yesterday, which of course meant I had to go buy some alum, and while I was there I might as well pick up some cochineal...well, you get the idea. I have skeined off about four ounces of yarn and am going to mordant, dye, etc. today.

I must say that I've gotten spoiled by synthetic dyes, though...the whole mordanting and dyeing process now seems so bloody involved that I almost didn't even get started. Having done a lot of work with synthetic dyes now, I'm not convinced that the colors are really richer and more complex than with synthetic dyes...but we'll see. I did go through an extensive natural dye "phase" back about ten years ago, so I do remember the beautiful shades you can get--I'm just not convinced they're any more complex and beautiful than well-blended synthetic dyes. But we'll see. I plan to do one skein of marigold, one skein of cochineal, and one skein of marigold + cochineal, to see how the colors blend. If I like the look of it, I may do some more extensive experiments, including (perhaps) some fleece dyeing. I have yet to figure out how to dye merino in the fleece without felting it, so the fleece dyeing is apt to be pretty limited.

I have also picked up a book on designing Celtic knotwork! I plan to use it in my Celtic-knotwork eggs, if I can find the time to work on them in between the other stuff. Fortunately work is pretty slow (and even slower now that I've given notice ;-) ) so I can probably break out more time than usual, the next two weeks.

Still struggling with Fair Isle, plus some philosophical speculation

I've now knitted about 6" of one sleeve and 5" of another on this Fair Isle sweater, and am finding it verrry slow going. Mostly it's that I'm not used to knitting English-style, and unfortunately the mechanics of Fair Isle knitting forces me to do most of my knitting with the right-hand yarn. (The left-hand yarn has bigger stitches than the right-hand yarn, so should really be used for the main color. That leaves the right hand doing the background, which unfortunately is most of the stitches.)

Anyway, I'm doing it, but it's taking intense concentration and I find I can only knit a few rows at a time. I'm working at it, though, and my right-hand knitting is definitely improving. It's just verrrrrrry slow.

* * * * * * *

I've been thinking lately about why people pursue crafts, and a little more broadly: why do people do things? It seems to me that there arebasically four reasons why people do things:

(1) enjoying the process
(2) wanting the end product
(3) exploration, trying something new
(4) personally meaningful

The four aren't mutually exclusive, of course, and most things are a combination of both, but it does solve the long-nagging question (for me) of why spinners behave the way they do, collecting way more fiber than they'll ever use, starting projects they'll never finish, doing things that are monumentally inefficient, and so on. (Lest anyone take that the wrong way, I do the same things myself. :-) ) It also answers the question--for me anyway--about UFOs, those unfinished objects left in the closet. They're the end result of an exploration that never quite made the grade on the other three categories--so, after the novelty value wore off, it wasn't worth doing.

To me that means that being clear about why you're doing something allows for a lot less guilt. Exploration is wasteful. Exploration (in its extreme form) means trying a little bit of everything and discarding an awful lot of things, because you're basically engaged in tourism. You don't want the end product, you want to play with this new idea--after the idea has been mined out, you move on because it isn't interesting anymore. So exploratory projects are, in some sense, meant to be abandoned--if your purpose is exploration.

In my case, with the exception of one or two very long-term projects, I'm an explorer. I tend to start a lot of projects and not finish most of them, because they're of intellectual interest only. (This is also why I wind up knowing a little bit about an awful lot of topics--I try a LOT of different things.) Lately I've gotten more ruthless about tossing out those UFOs, because I understand that the reason I started them was to explore an area and the exploration's done. This is wasteful if you think of it in terms of an end product, but makes perfect sense in terms of learning. To spend more time on something than it takes to learn it is a waste of educational time.

All of which is just a rationalization for my behavior, of course, but I like to know why I do the things I do.

I also think the four reasons are good to think about for other things, like work and why you do it. But that's another story.

I have a new job!!!

I've spent the last few months job-hunting (quietly--which is why I didn't mention it) and have FINALLY landed the position of my dreams! I'll be going to Macromedia and project managing Flash Lite--i.e. Flash for cell phones. Good, complex, relatively new product that will potentially be used on BILLIONS of cell phones (how many desktops out there run Flash Player?)--and I liked everyone I interviewed with, so very very very happy about it. I even got a small raise!

The best part is that Macromedia has just been acquired by Adobe, and Adobe employees get 4 weeks and 4 days of vacation per year! Is that cool or what??

I also passed my PMP exam, so I now have my professional certification. Passed the PMP AND got my offer letter on the same day! Good news all around.

I have been watching the footage and the news stories on New Orleans with mounting horror. It's hard to imagine an entire city being wiped out all at once--makes you realize just how tenuous life really is. It'll be a long time rebuilding. I hope New Orleans doesn't lose its unique character in the rebuild. I also hope things work out OK for all the people who have been displaced, and who will have to wait three or four or more months to go back to their homes.

Fiber-wise, I have started knitting a Fair Isle sweater with a pattern out of Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified--it's their "Windows" pattern, which is basically a black diamond pattern over a varying-color background. I'm working on the sleeves right now, working two sleeves on the same circular needle. I may swap over and work the sleeves on dpns, though--I much prefer double-pointed needles to circular needles for small circular work. I may also switch back over to bamboo circulars--I know the Addi Turbos are supposed to be quicker, but it's much harder to control the yarn, and I'm still a beginner at Fair Isle.

And I have a new wheel! I went to Carolina Homespun and tried out the Majacraft Suzie and the Lendrum with fast flyer. I immediately fell in love with the Suzie, which was a problem since the price tag was way out of my reach--$850 for the wheel with all the accouterments to spin superfine lace yarn. Just as I was despairing, I remembered that Joy (the friend I wrote about in my last blog) had a Suzie and was moving to India soon...so I dropped her a line, and lo! she was willing to sell the Suzie and a big list of attachments for a price within my budget. So that's settled, and hopefully I'll be able to pick up the wheel this weekend. I'm psyched.